


waving goodbye to something that survived it

by inamorata_jones



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: Crime families of choice, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2018-06-29
Packaged: 2019-05-30 12:47:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15097037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inamorata_jones/pseuds/inamorata_jones
Summary: "Lizzie," he says, helplessly. An apology, a prayer -(Or: What goes on in Red's head at the end of T. Earl King.)





	waving goodbye to something that survived it

He thinks, kneeling on the tile with Yaabari’s gun to the back of his head, that it’s no surprise. It's embarrassing, of course, dying in an inbred fool’s basement, wearing this fucking _awful_ tux (honestly, was it too much to hope the Kings might’ve bought a few lessons in refinement with their blood money?), just so some two-bit warlord can have his head for a bounty. But from the moment he’d touched his knees to the floor at the Plaza, the only questions had been where and when, whose finger would be on the trigger when the time came. That dream he’d had, of retiring to the house on the Amalfi Coast not even Dembe knew about, spending lazy summers there with Lizzie, her children, little girls with their grandmother’s sly grin – well. He’d known even as he dreamt it how idiotic it was.

When he shuts his eyes, he sees her looking up at him on the night of the fire, sees her from a distance on her wedding day, sees her as she was just now, her gaze wide and her hands trembling as she tried and tried to find the code to his cell and could not. He’d thought, noting the Peretti boy behind her, of telling her to cultivate the family’s gratitude; it might prove useful later on. He’d thought of telling her he loved her, in case she listened this time. _Go_ , he’d said instead, confident she would eventually come to understand all the care he’d put into the word.

He hopes, with his usual selfishness, that she’ll remember the Sorrento music box, and the kisses he’d pressed to her hair. That she’ll never learn the things he’s killed to keep her from knowing, that Dembe and Kate will make her safe, and redeem his promises for him.

“Lizzie,” he says, helplessly. An apology, a prayer –

The shot is louder than he expects. He turns, at once bewildered – he shouldn’t be alive to have heard it - and utterly sure of what he'll see.

“Lizzie.” His darling, brave, unforgivably stupid girl. She’s shaking as she unlocks his cuffs, but she steps easily around Yaabari’s body, not sparing it a glance, and her voice is firm when she says they need to go. He’ll have to tell her later, if he doesn’t murder her first, how very proud she makes him.

  
*

They leave him alone in the back of a cruiser to stew. By the time she slides in next to him, he can hardly stand to look at her. Can hardly speak, the mingled love and frustration a brick in his throat. “You can never do that again,” he says finally, summoning a dad voice he hasn’t used in decades, and congratulates himself on his restraint.

“You’re welcome,” she smarms, like the teenager she will insist on _being_ when she’s around him. In other circumstances he might find it endearing, but tonight he is in no mood.

He wants to shake her. Why does she refuse to grasp this one very simple point? She can’t be permitted to keep flinging herself into danger for him. She is the _only_ thing –

Yelling, however, would only frighten her away – he knows that – and so: “I’m serious. You can _never_ do that again. Promise me.”

And then she’s off, savage as her mother, babbling insultingly about how fucked up he is like it’s never occurred to her that he knows.

“I risked my life for you because I care about you,” she says. “Deal with that.”

There are tears in her eyes.

He can never get used to it, the way her pain cuts him clean in two. He would give a great deal for her to choose to lay her head on his shoulder right now, and let him soothe the hurts he’s caused.

“And when someone does something nice, you’re supposed to say ‘thank you.’”

 “Thank you,” he parrots, to please her.

 “You’re welcome.”

 “But never do it again.”

 The words are out before he can stop them, and Lizzie is sullen, silent, then gone, the moment’s peace between them another casualty of his need to make his point. God help him, he will never get this right.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Larkin's "The Whitsun Weddings."


End file.
